Developing for mobile requires a completely different approach and mentality from web applications, said Mike Gilfix, Director, MobileFirst Platform & Analytics at IBM, in a live interview with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante at IBM Pulse 2014.

“Mobile is different, absolutely, from the web,” Gilfix said. “People are creating different experiences, it’s a different skillset, it’s a different experience for the user. Design is absolutely paramount,” as well as making sure the teams implementing it are ready for that.

Sharing mobile anecdotes, Gilfix said “one of the worst possible things you can do is take your exact website, throw a little mobile” features on it, and the use it. Mobile revolves around a “fit-for-purpose contextual computing model,” Gilfix clarified. The context for using my phone is different” from using tablets or computers, as users are finding there’s a different way they can consume data.

Unprecedented access for the enterprise

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Pointing out that IBM MobileFirst is all the rage on the consumer side, Furrier asked how mobile is regarded in the enterprise. Gilfix said “it is becoming the mantra for the enterprise,” mainly because it enables unprecedented access, “there is this next-gen of employees that demands this at work,” he said. The enterprise also poses new challenges. “The problem you’ve got is how you protect your data,” and make sure you are compliant with corporate policies, Gilfix remarked.

• Mobile devices, the universal controllers of the Internet of Things

Asked how the Internet of Things affects the mobile discussion and the evolution of MobileFirst, Gilfix said there was such an opportunity to interconnect how we interact with facets of digital interfaces. “A lot of these Internet of Things scenarios are exploiting mobile devices as universal controllers,” he said.  As far as moving from vision to reality was concerned, he said we should expect “a lot of this stuff coming to market in the next year or two.”

“These are ecosystems that have never been connected before,” Gilfix went on. It takes a while to interconnect and bring value to consumers. “You have this new class of devices with their intelligence that are only now being rolled out to consumers.”

“MobileFirst for us is a collection of technologies and services that we can offer to our customers who are looking to orient towards it. It’s also a lifestyle though,” Gilfix said.

Security, the trade off between keeping safety and value

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Commenting on the security aspect, Gilfix said “every mobile application has a client and a server component.” Security focuses on how to protect the data from the client in, as there are a lot of threats there. “Cloud introduces new security challenges.”

As there are more concerns voiced about cloud security, Vellante asked if mobile was inherently more secure. Gilfix said “security is one of the top things you have in every conversation about mobile. Security is a trade off between protecting your data and the value and peed you’re getting.”

There is tremendous pressure to go to market today, security needs are growing. Certainly building security into your applications is hard.

As far as the MobileFirst road map is concerned, IBM focuses on offering a breadth of their portfolio, one of the most secure platforms, a complete life cycle, and providing companies with the tools to create a differentiated brand experience.